


milk and honey (or anything that isn't a decade-old ration bar)

by Flora_Obsidian



Series: found families [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: (endgame is queerplatonic ot3), Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Gen, Pre-Relationship, finn is confused about food, resistance pilots are concerned about rey and finn being this confused about food, rey is confused about food
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-07-10 08:42:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6976015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flora_Obsidian/pseuds/Flora_Obsidian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Poe says she doesn't need to pay for food. That doesn't seem right, but Rey follows him anyway, because he looks like he knows what he's doing. He wouldn't lie to her, she doesn't think. Poe is nice, and food isn't a joking matter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	milk and honey (or anything that isn't a decade-old ration bar)

**Author's Note:**

> Set sometime between chapters one and two of _lights will guide you home_ , which is not strictly necessary to read to understand this, but it'd probably help.

She can't stay at Finn's bedside every hour of the day, every day of the week, though Rey truly wishes she could do so (Finn has held her hand). She's been proven correct in her assumption that joining the Resistance would result in attention far beyond anything she's used to, and because she's one of the few trained Force-users left in the galaxy (she's tried saying she's not _really_ trained, but everybody seems to think her rudimentary lessons are more than enough) she has to go to _meetings_ and _important things._ She sits with Poe sometimes, next to Finn, but he's Black Leader, overseeing multiple squadrons- the best pilot in the Resistance- he doesn't exactly have copious amounts of spare time. So there are times when Finn's bedside remains empty, no one outside the two of them who know the former Trooper well enough to care.

Poe shows up one day when Rey is scanning information on a datapad, looking for planets on which she might be able to find a saber crystal- she's hoping foreither blue, in homage to her grandfather, or orange, because she likes the color, though she knows she can't be picky. He puts a hand on her shoulder- she jumps, startled- physical contact is so _strange_ , and she doesn't really know what to do with it- her mind deems Finn special because he has _held her hand_ and she can't remember the last time anyone has ever done that- and he doesn't move it as he speaks.

“They're serving lunch in the mess hall, and I don't think you've left this room in the past thirty hours. Come on, let's go get some food.”

She knows there's a mess hall, but she's never actually set foot inside it. There's plenty of food around the base in places which don't have crowds or-

“I can't pay for it,” she starts, meaning to continue with an offer to work, or an explanation that she's left anything and everything she can trade on Jakku, that she's not trying to take what she hasn't earned-

Poe looks confused, though, says, “You don't need to pay for it. Though if you're lucky enough to get there early for bread when Ailuyo gets rotated onto kitchen duty, people will pay _you_. He's got some recipe off his home planet that's incredible.”

That doesn't seem right, but Rey follows him anyway, because he looks like he knows what he's doing. He wouldn't lie to her, she doesn't think. Poe is nice, and food isn't a joking matter.

The mess hall of the Resistance base is a crowded place, full of all sorts of species, and the _smell_ \- her stomach clenches with hunger, and normally she's good at ignoring that, except there's so much food and it's all _right there_. Poe waves to some people, smiles to some other people, calls greetings over the chaos- gets into a line, taking two meal trays off a stack and handing one to Rey.

“We've been rationing, so you can only go back for seconds. Make sure to take some of everything, too, they get all worried that you aren't eating enough when you don't. Something about proper nutrition. Though if you've got dietary restrictions, you should register that with medical, and they'll make sure there's always something you can eat. Like Admiral Ackbar? Only eats this weird seaweed kind of stuff. Nobody else likes it. And I mentioned the bread, right? If there's any, you need to try the bread.”

Bread, to Rey, is the powder that puffs up into a chalky, spongy partial sphere, but she doesn't register his words about the supposedly _good_ bread here- doesn't register much beyond his first sentence, because Poe just put the words _rationing_ and _seconds_ together and apologized that she can't have _more_ \- _rationing_ means that she can only have _two meals_ in one sitting- _two_ whole meals, at one time-!

“Base to Rey, Base to Rey, come in.” Poe waves a hand in front of her face. “Sorry, I can talk a bit much sometimes- you'll figure everything out soon enough. Come on, line's moving up.”

She doesn't even remember food beyond ration bars from her hoard cooked into something vaguely edible, and the half-portions (or quarter-portions, or _no_ portions) she used to get from the settlement after a day spent doing nothing but working were some questionable substances that tasted good when she didn't think about it. Here, she takes bread (not Ailuyo's bread, but _bread_ , real _actual_ bread-) and fruit, which Grandma has mentioned in her stories, though Rey has never had any context for what it is until now, and something green (another novelty), and a cup of stew that's hot and smelling of meat and spice-

Poe takes about twice as much as she does and walks her over to where Red and Blue Squadron are sitting, and they're all very nice- a friend of Poe's is a friend of theirs, maybe? Everyone is nice, here. It's a new experience.

And yet- Pava complains about the beans tasting like mush, and the fruit for being bruised- Wexley says the bread is dry, and pokes dubiously at the stew with a spoon- the general consensus is that the food here is _bad_ , but Rey almost wants to cry from how _good_ it is. She inhales the beans, prods softer parts of her fruit and deems them edible and eats it, and drinks the stew from the bowl and mops of the last of it with the bread- the tray is polished clean by the time everyone else is only half-finished.

“Damn, you must've been hungry.” Bastian peers at her empty tray. “Going back for more?”

It's the same size as two whole portions on Jakku. She feels hungry but bloated at the same time. She knows from experience that eating too much after eating too little will just make her sick.

“No, I'm full,” she says, only half-lying. “Had to eat quickly on Jakku to keep my food from getting sandy.”

They accept the explanation, though she doesn't protests when Poe gives her his fruit. She'll save it for tomorrow morning, when she goes to sit with Finn again. It will make a good breakfast.

But Poe shows up in the morning, and again at lunch- not for dinner, because he's flying patrols, so she eats one of the fruits she's stockpiled from the last three meals and looks for places that crystals are found and watches Finn breathe. They're still “rationing” that day, so she can _only_ have _two_ servings.

“Grandpa, he keeps saying I don't need to trade anything for all this food.”

Grandpa looks pained, but he also looks like he understands. _“You don't, Rey.”_

“But are you _sure_.”

“ _Yes, Rey.”_

“But- that can't be right.”

It is right, though she struggles to believe it. And Rey, only knowing Poe, Finn, Han Solo, and General Organa out of everybody on the base, only ever sits with Poe and whichever squadron is present in the mess hall; she gets a reputation for her eating habits, always finishing before everyone else and never wasting a bite.

“You eat like you've never had a full meal before,” Pava jokes one lunchtime, except it's not really a joke because it's true, and that's the point when it finally clicks in Rey's mind, even despite seeing so much food in one spot with her own eyes, even despite all of Grandpa and Grandma's stories- _that's_ the point when she realizes that just because her normal is a ration bar and a half-portion a day, it's not normal for most everybody else.

“Um,” she says eloquently, and evades the need to respond by shoving a large chunk of bread into her mouth.

Poe hasn't noticed anything amiss, and neither has the rest of Blue Squadron, but Pava is looking at her curiously.

“...I _was_ joking,” she says slowly.

“Um,” Rey repeats. Grandpa, useless at conversations as he is, just shrugs from a couple tables behind Pava, where's he's watching a card game of some sort and commenting on both sides cheating. “Jakku isn't the most hospitable of planets. Have you ever had that blue powder that puffs into a kind of bread when it's mixed with liquid?”

Pava makes a face. “S-Rations, but we call 'em shit rations because that's about what they taste like.”

It's an apt description, if she's being honest, though Grandpa drifts over and chimes in with, _“Hey, wait until you try womp rat. It's to die for. As in, it tastes so awful you kind of want to die.”_

“Traded scrap in for those on Jakku. And I had a stockpile of ration bars.” Rey tunes him out and shrugs. Hesitates. “Can I have your apple?”

Pava gives it to her.

And maybe the others finally tune in, or Pava tells them what Rey told her when she isn't around, but the others start _giving_ her things, an extra fruit at mealtime or part of their ration of sweets- _candied_ fruit is a marvelous creation and Rey will fight anyone who says otherwise. She doesn't know what to do with the generosity, even as Pava becomes Jessika and Wexley becomes Temmin- at least when Finn wakes up, he seems equally perplexed, though he's doing less eating and more sleeping- he's more confused about the effort put into rehabilitating him, when in the First Order he would have been decommissioned.

“They're saying I'm lucky, 'cause the blade didn't sever my spine,” he tells her. “First Order doesn't care about that. Break your arm, shoot with the other one- break your leg, hop or crawl until you've completed the orders you've been given. Can't shoot, can't walk, you're gone.”

“They're- nice, here,” Rey agrees.

“It's confusing,” Finn says.

“They keep giving me food. _Giving_ me food. And they don't let me work or pay them or anything.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Damn. Don't they ration?”

“They're _telling_ me they do, but the Poe turns around and says that rationing means I can _only_ have one or two meals per sitting, and the mess hall is _only_ open during three scheduled mealtimes.”

“ _Damn_ ,” Finn repeats, staring at her. “We got these- these calorie bars. Tasted like plastic, each one had a day and a half of nutrients, but they weren't filling at _all_. Felt hungry most of the time.”

“The settlement near where I lived handed out S-Rations in exchange for scrap,” Rey says, and Finn looks like he kind of wants to gag.

“God, those things are awful.”

“Aren't they?” Rey makes a face. “Though- I should go back. I have things there. I'd like to get them, at least.”

Finn still looks like he kind of wants to gag. “You go ahead, I don't think I like Jakku.”

Rey smiles, and she actually means it. “I don't blame you.”

And Finn gets better – he's lucky, _lucky_ , all the doctors and med droids say, lucky the blade didn't do worse damage – lucky, even though he wakes up shaking from nightmares, covered in sweat and utterly silent, because stormtroopers aren't even supposed to _dream_ – lucky, they say.

And he is lucky. He's _alive_ , after all.

The three don't really intend to start gravitating around one another, don't mean to wind up in each other's company regardless of where they happen to be on the base. Finn and Poe talk and smile and Grandma watches them fondly- and Finn and Rey bond over shared experiences in their pasts and the culture shock of a world that actually seems to care about them- and Poe takes on a protective role towards Rey, after she mentions what she and Finn talk about, and it isn't overbearing like she expects it to be after a lifetime of determinedly not depending- and Rey and Poe talk mechanics, Grandpa interjecting occasionally, though Poe has yet to notice, and Finn, Rey, and Poe become kind of a single entity, FinnandReyandPoe.

Anakin and Padme watch them sitting in a quiet area of the base, watch them talking and laughing with a youthful ease. There's a small spread of food around them, not enough to overwhelm but enough to tide them over until dinner. It's a relatively slow day on the base, or as slow as it ever gets, and they deserve a break.

“ _She's happier,”_ he says, and Padme hums in agreement. _“Wonder if she still needs us,”_ he says, and Padme hits him.

“ _Our son has followed in the footsteps of the old Jedi Masters and retreated into exile after one of his padawans turned to the Dark,”_ she says sharply, her tone making clear exactly what she thinks of it. _“You aren't putting her through that again.”_

“ _I wasn't saying that I was!”_ he says quickly, except he sort of had been (this galactic mess is arguably his fault, he's more than aware of it), and Padme just looks at him like she knows he's lying. Skywalker women always know when a man is lying.

“ _We're family, Ani. We stay.”_

“ _We stay,”_ he agrees, and they watch.

**Author's Note:**

> And that's that. I'll be at a writers conference this weekend, so hopefully I'll be able to get more in this series done! Hope you enjoyed. Comments are always very much appreciated.
> 
> Come find me on Tumblr @[floraobsidian](floraobsidian.tumblr.com)


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